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The representation of organizations and working life in the popular media signifies, but also helps shape, contemporary practice and institutions. Organization-Representation unravels the complex social relationship between organization and its representation, offering new insights into the interaction between the popular images we create and receive, and the power relations that govern society, working life and culture.
Representations in Hollywood movies, ethnographic and documentary films, children's literature and the popular and `quality' press replicate the power structures they supposedly describe and consequently help shape contemporary realities. This volume offers rich insights into the relations between culture, power and work. It goes beyond such purely ontological questions to show convincingly that a critical analysis of the relationship between popular culture and the nature of organizational life enhances our understanding of both.
List of contents
Introduction - John Hassard and Ruth Holliday
PART ONE: REALISM AND REPRESENTATION
The Documentary Film Movement - Ian Aitken
The Post Office Touches All Branches of Life
Representing Reality - John Hassard
Cinema Verit[ac]e
The Cultural Representation of Trade Unions - Peter Stead
PART TWO: SEX AND VIOLENCE
What Is Wrong with This Picture? Sex and Gender Relations in
>Philadelphia - Ruth Holliday
Aids, Organization, Representation
Saloon Girls - Maggie O¿Neill
Death and Desire in the American West
PART THREE: MEN AND SUPERMEN
Child¿s Play - Christopher Grey
Representations of Organization in Children¿s Literature
Management Gurus - Norman Jackson and Pippa Carter
What Are We To Make of Them?
Fictional Money (Or, Greed Isn¿t So Good in the 1990s) - Linda McDowell
Masculinity and Madness - Rolland Munro
PART FOUR: ORGANIZATIONAL FUTURES
Cyberorganization - Martin Parker and Robert Cooper
Cinema as Nervous System
Computers and Representation - Warren Smith
Organization in the Virtual World
The Medium as Message - J Martin Corbett
Sublime Technologies and Future Organization in Science Fiction Film, 1970-95
Summary
This work seeks to clarify the social relationship between organization and its representation. The contributors: relate organization theory to sociological representation theory; and look at the work and organization with the aim of showing that they are part of popular culture.
